6
which saves the world. Men and women must make
men and women.
The reform of this world will never take place
until the potent active forces rally around this point.
The impressed forces will bring the man to Christ
and Christ to the man. When that happens the
change I life takes place and the large majority will
heroine (piite incapable of committing or tolerating
crime, because the reform has been accomplished
within the man and not upon outside forces.
But the question may be asked, how are we to
be led to Christ? Nothing is easier answered, noth
ing more simple, more intelligible or tangible. We
are what we are by tin* influences which surround
us: those who surround themselves with the highest
influences will reach the greatest perfection: those
who surround themselves with tin* lowest influences
will descend to tin* lowest degradation. To have
lived with Shakespeare, one, unless he was a hope
less dullard, could not have been other than wise;
with Cleopatra, licentious and lewd. Tin 1 truth is
that the great majority of bad men are what they
are by the negligence of those who talk plentifully
but do not back their words by deeds. Do not go
out among the unvirtuous and surround them with
the virtuous —do not bring Christ to them by acts
of virtue, bv deeds of charitv. mercy and love. If
• • *.
we are not sanctifiers of men in our common life,
in our language, walking and working, we need not
be surprised at so few Christians, at gross immorali
ties and high crimes and misdemeanors. The reason
that an honest, virtuous life is the greatest heritage
a father can leave to his children is because such
lives destroy the vice and save the virtue. It is
better to live and die where virtue is than live eter
nally where virtue is not
A Vote-Making Measure.
Surely, if a price of 15 cents for cotton and SI.OO
for corn do not attract men out of the mad race for
money, place and power and into the pleasant fields
and vine-covered homes of the country, a bill intro
duced into the present Georgia legislature to ex
empt all farm products from taxation for the period
of a year, will, if favorably acted upon. What the
farmer needs is not more industry, not more econo
my and intelligence. but special favors, such as
would be disreputable and unjust to bestow upon
corporations or merchants. Given these he may be
able to multiply, increase and replenish both in num
bers, as commanded by holy writ, and in wealth, as
by the same authority, he is forbidden of doing.
Xo distinction is made in the bill as to the kind
of farm products to become the beneficiary of this
beneficient piece of legislation, but it is presumed
that it applies only to cotton, corn. oats. peas,
gobers, etc., such as are not perishable and that may
THE REASON
be stored up and held for speculative purposes. The
exemption of the ass and the ox is not specifically
provided for which leaves the way for the assessors
to ybtain in an indirect way what they may be de
nied from assessments on vegetable products. set
it is not at all improbable that some shrewd lawyer
may discover that the cow and mule are both farm
products and entitled to the same exemption that
cotton is entitled to. the justness of which conten
tion a farmer-made court of appeals could scarcely
afford to take issue with.
This court nor many of the members of the
General Assembly can afford to oppose the bill be
cause it will make country homes pleasant.—cool in
the summer, warm and comfortable in winter.
There'll be no more story and a half homes after it.
hot ovens to bake in at night and abominations at
all hours of the day. Farmers from the first day of
its enforcement will eat only the best of everything
they raise and sell the rest: they'll throw away their
old stoves and get new. large, up-to-date ranges,
which will roast the meat instead of their wives;
when farmers come to town in future they will not
bring along their rations tied up in a napkin and
eat out in the cold and rain, nor sleep in their
wagons, but will be able to put up at the best hotels
and fare as well as the “drummers;’' farmers’
daughters and wives will now adorn themselves in
colors that paint the wings of the moth, add
another hue unto the rainbow and that the beaut
eous eye of Heaven will seek to garnish itself with.
The Georgia farmer who has been oppressed in
some mysterious way by every kind of business
must be elevated not by science, not by the invention
of plows, reapers and mowers but by class legisla
tion, a thing that has the power to do for him what
industry, intelligence and skill has never been able
to do. lie will prosper now not by reason of any
assistance rendered him by the mechanic, the in
ventor and the thinker but solely through a debt he
owes to one W. C. Powell of Lincoln County, the
author of the farm product exemption tax act. He
will, however, very probably be called upon to
pay this debt at compound interest rates if he
doesn t look out and see that the bil] is properly
drawn and means no more nor less than it says, and
is subject to an early repeal it if does not work very
well.
Cleveland Not Understood.
Grover Cleveland, twice president of the United
States, died suddenly at his Princeton. X. J., home
last Wednesday morning at the age of 71. His
death removes one ol the most conspicuous men of
his time, and closes a life indelibly written on the
character of the nation. Both friend and foe now
acknowledge him to have been a man with the
courage of his convictions, and a statesmen if not
